Twenty!

I love this picture of these two...

As of 3:50 this morning, we have one less teenager in the family. Alisa has officially entered her twenties, which makes me feel O-L-D.  When she was born she took her own sweet time getting here.  She  was eight days over due, which made it seem like we waited for her forever.  And then, I turn around, and 20 years have flown by like they were nothing.  We have now seen 1/3 of our children more or less successfully through their teenage years. But I was figuring today that we have had at least one teenager in the house since 2002, and we will have at least one teenager in the house until Olivia turns 20, in May of 2025. Holy crap, that is nearly 23 years of teenagers! I remember being freaked out at the thoughts of having one or more kids in diapers for five years. I never stopped to think about how long they would all be teenagers, which is even messier and more expensive than the diaper thing. People should plan better.

Nah, I don't really have too much to complain about. We have awesome kids around here, that so far have turned out to be pretty great people, even through those years 12-18. Alisa is on her own, working her tail off to earn her way through college and getting excellent grades. She is brave enough to be taking off all her own to Europe this next year, and has definite plans for her future. She is a sweet, thoughtful daughter and a most amazing big sister. She is light years ahead of where I was at her age, and I'm not sure where she gets it all from, but I am proud to be her mom.

We haven't celebrated yet, since she was busy with school and working today. The plan is for a weekend party, with some Harry Potter 7 thrown in for good measure.  I feel like a terrible mother for not even seeing her on the day she turned 20.    But I did make sure her taxes got filed on time, so I guess I'm still good for something.  I worried a little bit, when she was born on April 14th, that she might not like her birthday if it was always associated with cramming to get her taxes done.  Can you imagine turning 40 and finding out you owe a bunch of taxes on the same day?  That would be terrible!  I vowed to teach her to always get her taxes filed early so it wouldn't be a birthday issue.  I'm not sure she really listened though.